Beer vs Liquor: An Alcohol Price Per Ounce Comparison
Deciding between beer or liquor when consuming adult beverages is something you may contemplate when socializing with friends. The answer may depend on the temperature outside, the setting, and even your mood. But has price ever entered your mind when deciding between beer and liquor? Is one cheaper per ounce of alcohol? I wanted to find out, so I did a beer vs liquor comparison.
Beer and liquor are sold at varying price points and alcohol contents, but for a simple comparison let’s compare some popular products.
Product Price
First, let’s look at the price of these popular products:
- 24 Pack Coors Light at Costco: $15.75
- Surly’s Todd the Axe Man (4 pack of 16oz Cans): $13.99
- Malibu Coconut Rum (1 Liter): $16.99
- Ketel One Vodka (1 Liter): $27.99
- Captain Morgan Spiced Rum (1 Liter): $20.99
- Bulliet Bourbon (750ml): $28
Price Per Ounce of Alcohol
- Light Beer: A case of Coors Light contains 288 ounces of beer at 4.2% alcohol. This gives us roughly 12.1 ounces of alcohol for $15.75. That works out to be $1.30 per ounce of alcohol.
- Craft IPA: Surly’s Todd the Axe Man IPA is commonly sold in 4 packs of 16oz cans. With an alcohol content of 7.2% you get 4.6oz of alcohol for $13.99, or $3.04 per ounce.
- Malibu Rum : 1 Liter is roughly 33.8 fluid ounces. Malibu rum is 21% alcohol, giving us 7.1 ounces of alcohol for $16.99 or $2.39 per ounce of Alcohol.
- Vodka: Ketel One vodka is 40% alcohol, thus 1 Liter of product contains 13.5 ounces of alcohol for $27.99 or $2.07 per ounce.
- Rum: Captain Morgan Spiced Rum is 35% alcohol, providing 11.8 ounces of alcohol for $20.99 or $1.78 per ounce.
- Bulliet Bourbon: A 750ml bottle of bourbon is about 25.36oz. With an alcohol content of 40% and a cost of $28 you get 10.1oz of alcohol for $2.77 per ounce
Analysis
Because liquor has a much higher alcohol content than beer, people consume a less amount. This may also lead people to believe that per ounce, liquor is a cheaper way to purchase alcohol. There certainly is a wide range of prices and alcohol content for both beer and liquor. But in a beer vs liquor analysis of a sample of popular products reveals it depends upon what you’re drinking. If your beer of choice is less expensive American Lager, beer is actually cheaper. But if your preferences lean more towards craft beers, hard liquor is cheaper. You really have to do the analysis on your preferred brands, but hard alcohol is not the slam dunk money saver you may have thought it would be.
What do you think, Clever Friends, did this result surprise you? It certainly surprised me!
Read More
Read more great articles from Clever Dude:
- How Costco Liquor Prices compare To Sam’s Club
- Save Big at Costco Liquor Stores
- Which Is Cheaper: Keg or Canned Beer?
Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.
Not a lot of meat on the bones, here. A more useful article might be to compare the cost of a typical serving, or the cost of the amount usually consumed. Personally, I am torn by the discounts that come with the 24-pack carton’s of beer because even a six-pack will last me a long, long time.
I can appreciate your perspective, James, however you aren’t able to walk into a liquor store and purchase a serving of alcohol (there may be a few items available), and the amount usually consumed is very subjective. This article was written from the perspective of a customer standing in the liquor store wondering what gets them the most bang for their buck (beer or hard liquor) given the size of a product they must purchase. I just happened to choose two of the most popular size and brand of products to do the comparison. Thanks for your comment!
Hahaha, if you’re going to use a cheap-ass beer in your comparison then you need to use cheap-ass liquor as well. Artificially skewed results.
While I agree that coor’s is cheap, beer may still well be a better value than budget liquors. Think of Olde English ‘800’ High Gravity – 42oz @ 8% for $2 is only $o.60/oz of pure ethanol!!
Christopher Watson– while prices for beer, wine, and liquor vary from store to store, city to city, and state to state, as someone who has made a mission of finding the cheapest alcohol per ounce in every state I’ve lived in and every place within those states, I have found in my travels that while I prefer wine and liquor, beer tends to be the cheapest bang for the buck. While sometimes the cheapest liquor can be comparable oz per oz to the cheapest beer, in most places I’ve found that it’s very rare to find the cheapest liquor to be cheaper than the cheapest beer. Everywhere I’ve been, upon investigation, the cheapest beer available also ends up being the cheapest alcohol in the area.
That isn’t to say that it’s impossible for an area to have bottom shelf liquor of a certain size that’s cheaper than any beer of any size or brand oz for oz in the same area. Only to say that everywhere I have looked, I discovered the same conclusion as the writer of this article (cheap beer is usually cheaper than cheap liquor). Happy shakes in the morning.
Okay, well it also depends on where u buy your alcohol… So here in the Philippines… One Litre of Redhorse Beer made by San Miguel currently costs 150php per bottle during CV19….and one person can easily down that with no problem. No Andy Player which is a local scotch costs about 180php for 700ml and is about 35% alcohol and I’d say a bottle would easily get two people blotto…so your i think your beer v liquor comparison needs refining!
It does depend on where you live.
I have found that in fact places I have checked since my last post have fifths of the cheapest vodka for $5, that fifth containing 16-17 1.5oz shots so about 16.5 drinks, whereas in these areas the cheapest beer with the highest alcohol content sometimes ounts to <16.5 drinks. So both you and Christopher Watson are correct; it depends on where you buy your alcohol. And obviously if we're looking at the cheapest price for the most alcohol, captain Morgan and "popular" liquor brands should not be the metric used if comparing it to the cheapest beer. As I've found that indeed the cheapest liquor in some areas can have both more or less alcohol vs the cheapest beer, it just depends on where you are.
The use of a Costco 24pack then an overpriced litre of vodka isn’t quite a good comparison. I can acquire a Handle 1.5 L of quality Sobieski vodka for about $20 and I don’t have a Costco card so an 18 pack of PBR or High Life is about $15 after taxes….so mymath shows vodka to be muuch cheaper.
Your comparison is out dated. You are probably comparing the companies which pay you .
KENTUCKY GENTLEMAN 1.75 Lwhiskey is avialable at $11.99 for the bottle at 40 % alchol.
Compare Natty Daddy and many other ICE beers with 8% alchol, 25 FL at $1.99 per can. Cheaper if you buy a case.